Kakuma

Sunday January 11, 2016​Jet lagged from the 10 hour time change, exhausted from the 60 hours of air travel and 4 hours of very tense driving, we jumped right to work. After a 7 AM typical Kakuma breakfast of chai mendazi – milk tea and African donuts - the 7 geophysicists and 2 person film crew split into two groups. 5 of us unpacked and checked the equipment shipped in 16 large wooden crates weighing 1400 kg. The other 4 of us packed into a 4X4 with one of the South Sudanese refugee WASH students, Michael, and traveled to approximately 30 water wells located in the Camp. These wells included a mix of hand dug boreholes, machine drilled deeper wells producing from bedrock and overburden sand aquifers, hand pump water wells, solar powered wells, wind powered wells, etc. The point of this reconnaissance was to map in the locations of as many boreholes as we could find so as we could tie our geophysical survey lines to points of known geology, water levels, water chemistry, etc. It also gave everyone an opportunity to acquaint themselves with one of the largest refugee camps in the world, the host Turkana community, working in 40 degree heat, and eating njere in the Ethiopian Market at the most notable eating establishment and coffee house of the Kakuma Refugee Camp, Franco’s.